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New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017

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Re: New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017

#121
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BSG is in many ways a response to the happiness and ease of Voyager, with pretty much everyone leading a good life with plentiful resources despite being marooned far from any help. Terribly lazy writing had the Voyager crew constantly destroy shuttlecraft and fire photon torpedoes they weren't supposed to be able to replace. The ship started out with 38 torpedoes and no way to replace them (stated explicitly in dial…

>The ship started out with 38 torpedoes and no way to replace them (stated explicitly in dialogue!) and by the end of the show they had used something like 85 of them. I get where you're coming from, and they definitely would have been better served to a) not say that, or b) resolve it at some later time. That said, part of what made Voyager interesting (to me) was that they had basically taken house cats and thrown…

That is kind of my point. What made Voyager interesting was the dire situation they put everybody into, but then they chickened out and often just punted on the whole question.

How you cope with conflict when your supply of weapons is inherently limited can make for interesting stories. How to find a new supply of weapons could make for interesting stories. But they couldn't be bothered to go either way, and just went straight for "the characters figured it out somehow, offscreen, and implied."

To stretch your house cat analogy way too far, it's like if the show constantly had the cats eating kibble, but without ever addressing the question of where it came from, even though that's a pretty important part of surviving in the wild and has lots of potential for good stories.

Re: New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017

#122

Two Words: Starfleet Academy. It would be perfect to introduce a new crew and follow them through the Academy years. They could either do the backstories of existing characters to introduce new ones. You can combine the fun of Hogwarts-eque school, with younger drama, and still throw in lots of science and adventures.

Didn't they do Starfleet with the Bakula series?

Re: New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017

#123
Currently re-watching the Next Generation on Netflix. The remastering is wonderful; you can really see the film-level quality in things like Geordi's visor, etc. What I miss most about the Star Trek universe is its optimism; particularly during The Next Generation days. Sci-fi has largely mirrored the militarism of the past decade. If the new series brings back some of that optimism, I'd be excited.

Re: New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017

#124

Two Words: Starfleet Academy. It would be perfect to introduce a new crew and follow them through the Academy years. They could either do the backstories of existing characters to introduce new ones. You can combine the fun of Hogwarts-eque school, with younger drama, and still throw in lots of science and adventures.

I'm binge-watching DS9 (for the second time ;) and I have been thinking a series about Nog's time at Starfleet Academy would be fun.

Re: New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really hope that this won't be in the rebooted universe because it was well kinda meh I'm not a hardcore Star Trek fan, but was very disappointed with the new films. They're mostly generic action in space with some familiar names and Starfleet uniforms. Every little thing that made Star Trek entertaining has been stripped away. Not too surprising considering JJ Abrams told in an interview that "I would watch epis…

I'm not a hardcore fan either I watched TNG, DS9 and Voyager as just another Scifi show back when MGM, Paramount and 20cent Fox still wanted to make television we had Stargate, Babylon 5, Star Trek, then Scifi was pretty much left to in the hands of syndicated TV productions and basic cable which resulted in well meh. Shows like BSG are pretty much unicorn's these days no one seems to want to make serious scifi the b…

Ascension was interesting but I believe canceled as a series last time I checked on wikipedia.

yup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_%28miniseries%29#Pot...

Re: New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017

#126
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're mostly generic action in space with some familiar names and Starfleet uniforms. You've just described the Wrath of Khan, considered one of the finest films in the franchise. Hell, a good number of episodes in every series in the franchise were just action in space... the Best of Both Worlds is literally just Us vs The Borg. Fans have incredibly rose tinted glasses regarding ST. For every City on the Edge of F…

Wrath of Khan is only good because of Mantalban. The movies didn't really pick up until the fourth one, when they stopped taking them so seriously and just had some fun making a movie. And at least a handful of good episodes exist. There are no such specimens among the (two) new movies.

Wrath of Khan is only good because of Mantalban. The movies didn't really pick up until the fourth one, when they stopped taking them so seriously and just had some fun making a movie.

So you're a "Trouble with Tribbles" kind of a guy/girl.

Nothing wrong with that at all, everyone has different tastes!

But we'll agree to disagree. While Khan is clearly an action film first, it's an exploration of Kirk as a character, which is interesting. And that ending...

Frankly, I'll put myself in the minority by stating that I personally think The Voyage Home was frickin' awful... really, a fish-out-of-water tale (well, mammal-out-of-water...) via time travel? sigh

But that's just my opinion. :)

Re: New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017

#127
post #111

Trek at it's best: 1. Isn't afraid of being slow, talky, and philosophical (Sorry J.J.). TNG had many excellent episodes specifically because it was willing to risk being "boring", while DS9 evolved Trek into the homogeneous "action" formula that has dominated Voyager, most of Enterprise, and the recent movies. 2. Is a force for idealism. The captains of Star Trek are paragons of humanity, and are supposed to find th…

One addition in terms of how Trek becomes great, from a behind-the-camera perspective:

7. Results from a tension between competing visions between writers and creators. Examples: TNG was campy and unwatchable, mostly, until Michael Piller took over as head writer in the third season and started focusing on characters and more traditional drama. Piller had an inclination to be too soap opera-y but was held in check by Roddenberry's presence and later, spirit. DS9 was the result of the tension between Ira Steven Behr and Berman aided by Ronald D Moore, and worked well until it became the all-war-all-the-time series. Voyager is the result of Berman, Braga and Jeri Taylor running wild without any counteracting force. Enterprise is the same (minus Taylor).

Re: New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really hope that this won't be in the rebooted universe because it was well kinda meh I'm not a hardcore Star Trek fan, but was very disappointed with the new films. They're mostly generic action in space with some familiar names and Starfleet uniforms. Every little thing that made Star Trek entertaining has been stripped away. Not too surprising considering JJ Abrams told in an interview that "I would watch epis…

I'm not a hardcore fan either I watched TNG, DS9 and Voyager as just another Scifi show back when MGM, Paramount and 20cent Fox still wanted to make television we had Stargate, Babylon 5, Star Trek, then Scifi was pretty much left to in the hands of syndicated TV productions and basic cable which resulted in well meh. Shows like BSG are pretty much unicorn's these days no one seems to want to make serious scifi the b…

I didn't like Dark Matter initially, but it won me over by the end of the first season. I think it felt more Sci-Fi as the show went on.

I will fully admit that if there was any other legit Sci-Fi on TV I might not care as much about Dark Matter, but since there is slim pickings in that genre I await season 2.

Re: New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017

#129

Kinda worried that this will be a "web-only" series, Star Trek needs quite a good production to work well, The budget for a TNG episode was 2M$ which was pretty unheard off back then and is even considered expensive these days (GOT which is currently the most expensive running show has about 6M per episode and when you count the fact that TNG had 24-25 episodes per season the overall season budget was almost the same…

>" This new series will premiere to the national CBS audience , then boldly go where no first-run Star Trek series has gone before – directly to its millions of fans through CBS All Access,” said Marc DeBevoise [emphasis mine] Sounds like it is going to be on TV.

They are definitely putting it on TV. This is like when games are advertised "Only on Playstation" when there's also a PC version, since it's a console exclusive. They just really want people to subscribe to their streaming service instead of Netflix, so their app will be the exclusive (legal) streaming destination.

Re: New Star Trek Series Premieres January 2017

#130
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voyager is definitely the worst offender with "reverse the polarity" plot devices, but it also doesn't take itself so seriously. It was very much the polar opposite of BSG in that regard. I didn't find DS9 picked up that problem in the later seasons though, so I've got to disagree with you there.

... because Ron Moore was DS9's showrunner.

He was a writer, but Ira Stephen Behr was the showrunner.
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